The Beauty of Ugly

Format: DVD Runtime: 60 minutes Series: Nature Closed captioned: Yes Described Video: No

We may think we know what is beautiful and what isn’t, but in the natural world, beauty can be many things – including what we might find completely repulsive.

If you look like a colorful blob of mold, if you’re long and slimy, if your face looks like a shovel, or you have tusks growing into your head, if you are the owner of a pendulous nose, enormous buck teeth, a fat body, or have tentacles on your face, someone will love you just the way you are.

And not only can the bizarre be attractive, it can also provide just the edge a creature needs to succeed in a difficult environment. From frogfish and hagfish to naked mole rats and elephant seals, from vultures and warthogs to proboscis monkeys and the ugliest bug in Oklahoma, we learn how and why ugly can be beautiful, even when it isn’t pretty.